The David Geffen Galleries at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) will open to the public on Sunday, May 3, after 20 years of development. Designed by architect Peter Zumthor, the 900-foot-long horizontal glass and concrete structure overlooks the La Brea Tar Pits and stretches over Wilshire Boulevard. The main floor, elevated 30 feet above street level, offers 110,000 square feet of gallery space for LACMA’s permanent collection. The inaugural exhibition is inspired by four major bodies of water—the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea—and features works by artists including Todd Gray, Do Ho Suh, Lauren Halsey, Tavares Strachan, Jeff Koons, and Diego Rivera. The building also includes open plazas, an outdoor public space, and an Erewhon Cafe, with a larger restaurant and wine bar planned for fall 2026.
This opening matters because it marks a transformative milestone for LACMA, the largest art museum in the Western United States, and for Los Angeles’s art scene. The new galleries replace the museum’s outdated, cramped spaces with a dramatic, accessible design that prioritizes natural light and spacious wandering. The project has been controversial due to Zumthor’s use of concrete and glass, but it promises to revitalize the museum’s ability to display its 155,000-object collection spanning 6,000 years of world history. The opening also reinforces LACMA’s role as a cultural anchor in LA, alongside the adjacent Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.